Synthetic Website Monitoring Best Practices

Synthetic website monitoring (also known as synthetic testing) involves simulating the actions that visitors perform on a website and the journeys they take, in order to evaluate performance and proactively spot any issues or problems.

For example, synthetic testing can help answer critical questions like:

• How fast is our website, and is it fast enough?
• Are all transactions (e.g., filling out forms, adding items to carts, etc.) working properly?
• Are some areas of the website getting limited traffic, and is this normal or problematic?

However, not all synthetic testing solutions or strategies are equal. To help ensure that you generate the most important and reliable results — so that can take fast and correct actions — here are four key best practices to keep in mind: 

1. Configure Alerts (What, How, When & Who)

Your team needs to know if things are working as expected, or if there are issues and problems. But does this mean everyone has to be informed at the same time, and on an ongoing basis? For all but the smallest businesses, the answer is typically no. That is where alerts enter the picture.

You can set up synthetic testing alerts on four levels: what, how, when, and who. Let’s take a closer look at each one of these, since they are all equally important.

• What: You can set up alerts to inform you about essential things like website status, page speed, and transaction functionality.
• How: You can receive alerts through various methods such as automated SMS (text), email, or phone call. Often, organizations will start with SMS, and then escalate to email and then phone if the problem is not addressed.
• When: Sometimes, a website may go offline (or appear to do so) or experience page speed slowdowns that are temporary, lasting only a few seconds. You can choose to receive alerts immediately for all issues found, or set a schedule for when these alerts would come to you.
• Who: You can choose who receives alerts based on the issue or problem. For example, a website going down (and not as a one-off for a few seconds) is a major concern, and typically multiple people should be informed. Alternatively, it may make practical sense to have only certain individuals, like members of the Web Development Team, receive alerts about issues with a transaction workflow.

2. Use Script Recording to Set Transaction Monitoring

For all companies, but especially those in the e-commerce space, it is absolutely vital to know that all transactional elements are working properly.

As such, it is both wise and practical to choose an uptime monitoring solution that has built-in script recording for synthetic testing. Simply click “record” and perform actions that your customers typically take: filling out forms, adding and removing items from their cart, and so on.

When finished, simply end the recording and upload it to your account and the uptime monitoring solution will rigorously test the transactional workflow. If there are any problems or gaps, you will be able to address them proactively vs. waiting for your angry customers to bring it to your attention (assuming they even bother — many will just leave and head to a competitor!).

3. Monitor Your Website from Several Locations

You definitely want to continuously monitor and test your website from multiple locations around the world, so that you can proactively identify and address any performance issues — including localized content delivery network (CDN) outages.

4. Keep it SIMPLE

Last, but certainly not least: the synthetic testing and website uptime monitoring solution you choose should be refreshingly SIMPLE to configure and use. In the same light, the various reports should be straightforward and intuitive (i.e., you shouldn’t need multiple advanced IT and computer science degrees to understand them).

Try AlertBot Today!

With AlertBot, you will benefit from all of these synthetic testing best practices. AlertBot empowers you to:

• Choose what, how, when, and who to alert regarding problems or issues, as well as ongoing “everything is good” status updates via weekly email reports.
• Use intuitive script recording to capture any and every transaction workflow, down to the smallest detail.
• Monitor your website from locations around the globe to ensure that ALL visitors have a positive experience.

And of course, AlertBot has earned a stellar reputation for being extremely simple to use and adjust based on changing needs and goals.

Get a FREE TRIAL of AlertBot. There is no billing information required, no installation, and you’ll be set up in minutes. Click here to get started!

Three Advanced Notification Features that Your Site Uptime Monitoring Vendor MUST Deliver

To say that site uptime vendors deliver notifications is about as insightful as saying that cars have steering wheels, planes have wings, or TikTok videos have cringe. It’s a given.  

But this doesn’t mean that all vendors use the same notification playbook. Some vendors offer basic (read: superficial) notification features, while others offer advanced notification features that include: 

1. Multiple Notification Methods

Within minutes of unresponsive site behavior (and after verification that the issue is not a “false positive”), a designated individual in your organization — such as a sysadmin, network specialist, etc. — should be notified of the problem via email, text and/or automated phone call. The use of multiple notification methods increases the chances of a quick response.  

2. Customizable Notifications

If a detected failure continues, you have the ability to configure your monitor settings to notify even more members of your team, or other departments. This assures you that long-lasting events get all the eyes on them as needed.

3. Comprehensive Site Issue Notification

There is more to site uptime than just availability. In other words: a site may be online and accessible, but certain processes within the site — such as those involving checkout, signing-in, customer portals, etc. — may be malfunctioning. You need to be notified of these issues as well, since they can be just as costly and damaging to your reputation as your entire site going down.

The Bottom Line

Site uptime notification is essentially about one thing: discovering issues BEFORE your customers and visitors, so that you can rapidly target and solve the problem(s). Choosing a vendor that checks both of these boxes is not only a good idea, considering the potential costs and consequences to your revenue and reputation, it is a mandatory move.

AlertBot’s advanced notification feature supports: multiple notification methods (email, text and phone), automatic notification escalation, and comprehensive site issue notification. Discover why leading organizations around the world choose AlertBot. Launch your free trial.  

“We’ve been using AlertBot for over eight years now. We were sick of finding out about problems with our website from end users first. While there are varying levels of complexity to AlertBot monitors, even the simple alerts let us know almost instantly when we have an issue. The prioritization of alerting groups and timing allow us to automatically escalate the notifications if someone is not immediately able to respond.” – Chris C., IT Director 

Read other verified customer reviews here!

3 Ways Site Uptime Monitoring Boosts SEO

About 25 years ago, if someone told you to “Google” something, you’d probably smile, nod politely, and walk (or perhaps run) away. But now, Googling is the unofficial international pastime. Consider these statistics:

• 53% of all trackable website traffic comes from search engines — primarily Google, which commands 91.75% of total worldwide search engine market share.
• Google handles around 2 trillion (that’s 12 zeroes) searches per year.
• 39% of customers were influenced by a relevant search.

Clearly, the ability to show up for relevant search queries — a.k.a. search engine optimization (SEO) — matters enormously. In fact, it’s beyond enormous at this point. It’s ridiculous. And there’s no slowdown on the horizon. On the contrary, SEO will only play a bigger part in the digital role in the marketing mix going forward, for two simple and satisfying reasons: it’s much more affordable than conventional marketing and advertising, and it works. And you don’t need to have an MBA or have a Bloomberg terminal on your desk to know that affordable + works = popular. But less clear is the connection between site uptime monitoring and SEO. In fact, at first glance (and second and third as well), there may seem to be no connection at all. However, as any SEO expert worth their Google Search Console will attest, there is a significant link — positive or negative. Below we highlight three ways that site uptime monitoring can boost SEO:

1. Keep Visitors from Bouncing to the Competition

Would-be visitors aren’t the only ones who are frustrated when sites are not accessible — Google takes a dim view of this as well. Now, to avoid triggering paranoia, be assured that Google has said that occasional, short-lived downtime typically won’t negatively impact search rankings. However, ongoing or prolonged downtime is another matter entirely, and will lead to a major downgrade. Site uptime monitoring automatically alerts your SysAdmins, CTOs, and other relevant individuals when a site goes down, so that immediate steps can be taken to get things back online — and make both visitors, and (especially) Google, happy.

2. Identify and Fix Broken Elements

Google wants to provide searchers with relevant and quality site recommendations. The first part of that equation is largely determined by elements like keyword optimization, page rank and domain authority. But the second is determined by what visitors actually experience once they arrive on a site. Site uptime monitoring helps you proactively identify broken elements like links and buttons, so that they can be fixed before Google’s web crawler notices them and starts handing out SEO citations.

3. Boost Page Loading Speed

For a long time, SEO experts demanded that Google reveal that page loading speed was a factor in evaluating sites — and consequently in search engine rankings. And for a long time, Google sat back with its arms crossed and silently smiled (when you make north of $300 billion in revenue a year, you get to do fun stuff like that). However, a couple of years ago Google finally revealed the worst kept secret in the SEO kingdom: speed is, indeed, a factor for search. Site uptime monitoring helps you keep a close eye on page loading times, so that you can ensure that your site blazes like a brand new luxury sedan on the Autobahn, and not like a rusted out 1984 Reliant K-car that shouldn’t go faster than a bike and can’t really make left turns. The Bottom Line Site uptime monitoring is not a magic wand that will transport your site (or sites) to the coveted number one spot for relevant keywords. But as discussed above, it will significantly help your business gain an advantage in the search engine jungle — which means more visibility, more clicks, and more customers.

Start your FREE TRIAL of AlertBot now, and discover why it is the trusted site uptime monitoring solution for some of the world’s biggest organizations. There’s no billing information required, no installation, and you’ll be setup within minutes. Click here.

What is a HTTP 500 Error & How Can You Fix It?

One of the most valuable features of AlertBot’s web monitoring solution is that is automatically and continuously scans web pages for hundreds of possible errors, uniquely identifies them, and even captures a screenshot. Today, we’re going to take a deeper look at one of the many possible errors that AlertBot flags as part of its ongoing scans: HTTP 500 errors.

What is a HTTP 500 Error? An HTTP 500 error is an all-purpose error code. Basically, any error that doesn’t fit into an existing error code (e.g., 400: bad request, 403: forbidden, 404: not found, etc.), gets labeled as HTTP 500. Here’s what an HTTP 500 error looks like over at Google:

Image source

Potential Causes & How to Fix Them Here are some of the common triggers for an HTTP 500 error, along with possible solutions:

• A corrupt .htaccess file. This is a text file that instructs software to enable or disable certain functions. It may be possible to fix this by examining your site’s .htaccess file and verifying that it is properly structured. Check out this easy-to-follow tutorial.

• A permission error. This could be caused by networking issues, end user mistakes, or that most hated of virtual creatures: bugs! It may be possible to fix this by adjusting the permission on a CGI or PHP script.

• A database connection error. Begin your (hopefully short) troubleshooting journey by verifying that the database login credentials are correct. If that doesn’t do the trick, then your database may be corrupted. Unfortunately, this is quite common; especially if you use WordPress, since the database is constantly being modified by users, plugins, and themes. Start by logging into phpMyAdmin, selecting all of the tables in the database, and then choosing the “Repair Table” option from the drop-down menu. If this doesn’t work, then restore your site from a working backup (you DO have a working backup, right?).

• Faulty plugins. As you might expect, the simplest (but admittedly, not all that enjoyable) troubleshooting approach here is to start deactivating plugins one-by-one, starting with the most recently added.

• Exceeding your PHP memory limit. Basically, PHP allows a default amount of memory to be used when processing a site. But sometimes, a certain page needs more than memory. If the problem is on the server-side, then try any/all of these methods: edit the PHP.ini file, edit the .htaccess file, edit the wp-config.php file (If working in WordPress), increase the PHP default memory using cPanel (if working in cPanel), or increase the PHP default memory via ini_set() function. Here is a simple tutorial for each method.

• Browser compatibility issues. The best way to deal with this is by avoiding it in the first place by conducting rigorous cross-browser testing. If you did that and you still get a HTTP 500 error (or if you didn’t do that, but you pledge to do it going forward!), then check out these potential solutions.

The Final Word Use the above strategies to help you pinpoint and eliminate HTTP 500 errors — ideally as quickly and easily as possible. You can also rely on AlertBot’s comprehensive failure reporting to get notified when and where HTTP 500 errors occur.

Start a free trial of AlertBot today. There is nothing to download or install, no billing information is required, and you will be 100% setup in minutes. Get started now: click here.

AlertBot: How did you get into robotics?

Matthew Vasquez: In the early 2000’s, when me and my brother were little kids, my Dad saw [BattleBots] on TV, and at that time, wasn’t even an engineer or anything like that, he was just kind of a hobbyist – good with tools – and he decided he wanted to try it. So, me and my brother were exposed to it from a super early age, and we loved it then and we still love it now.

Jason Vasquez: My family introduced me to robotics as a concept, and brought me to my first event, called RoboGames. And in that event, my first time I bought a one-pound robot that was a kit, and I learned a lot from it and obviously gave me the need to keep doing robotics. Through that event, we were able to prep ourselves for BattleBots. So, once BattleBots came back on the air, we were in a good position to apply and get our foot in the door, and it’s been great ever since.

AlertBot: How did you get started in BattleBots?

Matthew: Me and my brother really got started on the TV show BattleBots in 2015 when the show got rebooted on ABC, and then eventually switched over to the Discovery Channel. But around that time, when combat robotics wasn’t really on TV, we were just doing smaller combat robot events in Southern California, sometimes traveling to Northern California, and occasionally other states. When we saw the show was coming back to TV, it was so exciting and [we] wanted to apply. We wanted to get on the show and kind of live up to our childhood heroes. In 2015, we barely made the cut for the TV show and ever since then, we’ve been competing and it’s been a pretty life-changing experience!

AlertBot: Do you plan on staying involved with BattleBots?

Matthew:  I think, as long as BattleBots is going, we want to be part of it in some way. We love competing. We love building. I love driving. I love the repair work. I pretty much love all of it! So, I think as long as BattleBots is around, we’re going to try our very best to be a part of it.

Jason: Yeah, whatever that may mean, I’d like to be involved in one way or another. It’s been great being on Whiplash and it’s been great having my own team. It’s a really great community and I’d like to stay involved in one way or another.

AlertBot: How did you come up with the name ‘Whiplash’?

Matthew: To this day, we’re not 100% sure. I was pretty convinced that I came up with it. There was another very unknown smaller robot named “Whiplash;” I really liked the robot, really liked the name, and I just kind of ended up using it for a different event that was not BattleBots, and then it kinda got carried into BattleBots. But we have other team members who are not convinced that it was me who came up with it…

Debbie Vasquez: Yeah, no, it was me. *laughter* It was me. I remember when I came up with it! I remember thinking I really liked “Backlash” back in the day in Comedy Central BattleBots days. And I was thinking “’Backlash.’ Alright, what else can we name it kind of like that?” And I was like, *Gasps* “Whiplash!” But… some people think otherwise.

Matthew: Yeah… *shaking his head* That’s not true. *Debbie laughs* But, whatever, it’s fine. We’ll never know!

Jason: Well, when people first asked us that, we’d like to joke around and say “Because Whiplash wins!” We chose that name [because] it’s a great name, I like it, and it’s been good ever since we chose it!

AlertBot: Is BattleBots a full-time job?

Matthew: Believe it or not, BattleBots is not a full-time job. Pretty much every competitor either works an engineering job, or some other job, or is a student, but BattleBots is not a profession. We go to our jobs for 8 hours a day, come home, work another 8 hours on our BattleBots and rinse, repeat when BattleBots season comes.

Jason: Well, during the two-plus weeks of filming, it is a full-time job, and up until the event with prepping and getting the robot ready, it certainly feels like it. We usually do it on top of school and our actual jobs, too. It’s a lot of time, but we just make the time for it and make it happen.

AlertBot: What do you do in the off season?

Matthew:  I have other hobbies: I play tennis, play guitar and bass. My brother does a lot of mountain biking. But in the off season, there are also plenty of other combat robot tournaments going on. There are lots of local ones. Sometimes we travel out of state to go to different ones, but combat robotics is really an all-year-round sport. But it’s that few months a year where BattleBots really takes over our lives.

Jason: I used to be really big into biking, but right now I’m focusing on school and work and, honestly, other types of robotics. I’m really trying to expand my horizons and just continue learning about robotics. It’s great!

Thank you, AlertBot!

Watch the full interview on our YouTube channel below!

A Closer Look at AlertBot’s Email Reports

At AlertBot, we know our customers don’t want too much data about their websites and tasks. Instead, they want clear, organized, and reliable intelligence that tells them: what happened recently, what’s happening now, what’s likely to happen in the near future — and what they can do about it. That’s where email reports enter the story.

Here are the five sections in AlertBot’s email reports: Availability, Performance, Common Errors, Failure Events, and Confirmed Failures.

Availability

The Availability section of the email report displays the overall uptime of the websites that you are testing. Additionally, it is color coded.

• Green indicates that everything is working perfectly (or nearly perfectly).
• Yellow indicates that there may be some minor concerns.
• Red indicates significant concerns that should be addressed.

Performance

The performance section of the email report provides details for the websites that you are testing. It displays a breakdown (measured in seconds) of each process, along with individual web pages that are associated with that process.

This is useful for daily website monitoring and studying long-term patterns to ensure their functionality. It helps in checking the performance of websites on a regular basis and analyzing trends over time. This is important to ensure that websites are functioning properly and meeting their objectives.

Common Errors

The email report’s common errors section shows all failures and transition errors that happened within a certain time. The list includes confirmed events, as well as those that are intermittent. Use this information to check for problems with websites or processes, or issues that need more investigating and analyzing.

Failure Events

Here, you will find a list of all confirmed failures (as indicated in the Common Errors section) for each hour in the past week. The failure events are also color coded:

• Red indicates significant areas of concern.
• Yellow indicates minor areas of concern (some confirmed failures).
• Green indicates no areas of concern.

Confirmed Failures

Finally, the confirmed failures section of the email report logs all problem areas. Notably, these have all been confirmed from a secondary location — i.e., they are actual failure events and not false positives.

With this in mind, there can be scenarios where confirmed failure events do not necessarily indicate a problem. For example, you may see that over the past week a website failed 10 times at 1:00am. However, after digging deeper you may discover that this is happening due to maintenance. If so, then you can simply set up a maintenance window.

The Final Word

In the 1990s flick Apollo 13, the big brains at NASA said that “failure is not an option.” Unfortunately, down here on earth, sometimes things in general — and websites and their related processes specifically — don’t work as expected.

Fortunately, that’s where AlertBot’s detailed, yet clear and focused, email reports make a transformative difference. It’s not just raw information. It’s actionable intelligence!

But what sets AlertBot apart is not just the information it provides, but how it presents it. Our reports are clear, concise, and focused, ensuring that you can quickly grasp the key insights without getting lost in a sea of technical jargon. We understand that not everyone is a tech expert, and that’s why we’ve made our reports accessible to all.

So why wait? Take control of your online presence and ensure that your website is running smoothly. Don’t let website issues hold you back – let AlertBot be your trusted companion in the digital realm.

Getting started with AlertBot is a breeze. With our free trial, you can experience the power of our email reports without any commitment. No need to download or install anything, and rest assured, we won’t ask for any billing information. In just a matter of minutes, you’ll be fully set up and ready to uncover the hidden potential of your website: click here.

As you may have already discovered (or will soon encounter), many vendors that offer uptime monitoring solutions charge a setup fee. But instead of seeing this as a legitimate cost, you should view it as stop sign. Here are three reasons why:

#1: Set up…what exactly?

A site uptime monitoring solution should be fast and simple to set up. A vendor that wants to charge for this is revealing one of two things: 1) their solution is excessively complex; or 2) their solution isn’t excessively complex, but they’re trying to squeeze extra money out of you.

Either reason is unacceptable. If it’s the former, then you can count on plenty of hassles and headaches in the future. If it’s the latter, then ask yourself why you’d want to do business with a vendor that, from day one, is trying to deceive you.

#2: Transparency isn’t optional.

Nothing is wrong with a vendor that wants to raise their prices. It’s a free market. But what IS wrong, is when a vendor tries to hide this through a setup fee — which as noted above may be (and probably is) bogus to begin with. Basically, a vendor that tacks on a setup fee is trying to manipulate customers. After all, it’s not like customers have a choice: the setup fee is mandatory. So why not just integrate this amount into the overall price?

Transparency with customers should be a principle — not an option.

#3: Setup fees are probably just the beginning.

If you agree to pay a setup fee, the vendor will continuously ask for additional money. This will happen regardless of whether you agreed to it directly or indirectly. Of course, they won’t hit you with more setup fees down the road — because they don’t want you to wake up and realize that they have normalized something that isn’t normal. Instead, they will likely try and add some other mystery costs like “upgrade fees.”

These upgrade fees may seem harmless at first, but they can quickly add up and leave you questioning the true cost of the service. It’s like a never-ending cycle of hidden charges that you never signed up for. And let’s not forget about the dreaded “maintenance fees” that may conveniently pop up after a few months of using the service. It’s as if the vendor is constantly finding new ways to squeeze more money out of you.

But why should you have to deal with all these additional fees and hidden costs? Shouldn’t the price you initially agreed upon cover everything? It’s frustrating to think that you’re being taken advantage of, especially when you were promised transparency.

That’s why it’s crucial to carefully review any contract or agreement before committing to paying any setup fees. Don’t just skim through the fine print; take the time to understand what you’re getting into. Ask questions, seek clarification, and don’t be afraid to negotiate. Remember, you have the right to know exactly what you’re paying for and how much it will cost you in the long run.

If a vendor is not willing to be transparent about their pricing structure or tries to brush off your concerns, it might be a red flag. Trustworthy companies understand the importance of building a strong relationship with their customers, and that starts with being upfront about all costs involved.

So, the next time you come across a service that requires a setup fee, think twice before agreeing to it. Consider whether the vendor’s pricing practices align with your values and expectations. Don’t settle for hidden fees and surprise charges. Demand transparency and hold companies accountable for their pricing strategies. After all, you deserve to know exactly what you’re paying for without any unpleasant surprises along the way.

The Bottom Line

When evaluating site uptime monitoring vendors, naturally you will focus on things like features, functions, technology, and integrations. But you should also scan for setup fees (which may be called something else like “deployment fees” or “implementation fees” — they all mean the same thing).

Regardless of what a vendor might tell you: setup fees are not an “industry standard.” And we’re the proof! AlertBot is a top site uptime monitoring solution provider. We have never charged any setup fees. Our solution is remarkably easy to setup and configure, and our pricing is 100% transparent with absolutely no hidden costs.

Launch a free trial of AlertBot’s acclaimed site uptime monitoring solution. No credit card. Nothing to download or install. Get started in minutes. And if you decide to purchase our solution, rest assured there are NO setup fees!

A Closer Look at AlertBot’s Alert Group Feature

If we start by sharing that AlertBot’s alert group feature lets you, well, alert certain groups, then you might wonder what earth-shattering revelations we have in store — such as water is wet, fire is hot, and the pain of Game of Throne’s final season will never, ever go away (seriously, whatever happened to Gendry?!).

Yes, you’re right: the alert group feature IS about alerting groups of people about a site failure — but as George R.R. Martin would say: there is much more to the story! Here’s a rundown of some interesting details that you may not be aware of:

Notes

When you set up an alert group, you can add notes if you feel that it would benefit your team. For example, you can let your Web Team know who the communication point person during a failure event should be or if it should include several people from the team, provide updates about vacation schedules, and anything else that you deem relevant.

Notification Order

You can choose when members of an alert group are notified of a site failure, from immediately all the way up to 48 hours later. For example, your Web Team can be alerted right away during a site failure event, and your CTO can be alerted 1 hour later into a site failure event and so on (if the problem persists). You can choose the frequency of alerting and how many times individuals or a group of people can be alerted during downtime events on your site.

Contact Method

You can also choose which email address will be contacted, based on the notification order. For example, an immediate alert can be sent to [email protected] and other teams/emails if selected, and then an hour later another alert can be sent to [email protected] and so on until the site is back up and running.

Monitors

What happens if you’re doing some testing or updating, and you don’t want failure events across all site monitors to trigger an alert (and maybe spark some anxiety)? No problem: you can choose which specific monitors are associated with an alert group.

But don’t worry: if you have a whole bunch of monitors and want to include them all, then you don’t have to manually add each one to an alert group. Simply select “All monitors in the account” and you’re good to go!

Do You Have 30 Seconds?

We’ve saved the best part for last: setting up a new alert group doesn’t take hours, or even minutes — it takes seconds. Simply choose the options you need, and you’re all set. And changing an alert group’s settings is just as fast (maybe even faster).

Try AlertBot Now

Reading is fun. But experiencing is better (unless you happen to be reading Game of Thrones and are perfectly happy learning about White Walkers vs. hanging out with them). Put AlertBot to the test by launching your free trial today. Play around with alert groups, along with many other features and functions.

 There is nothing to download or install, no billing information is required, and you will be 100% setup in minutes. Get started now: click here.

Unleashing the Web Guru: How Website Monitoring Boosts Traffic

by Louis Kingston

In the vast, mystical realm of the internet, where websites come to life and cat videos rule the land, there resides a hidden hero – Website Monitoring. Armed with lightning-fast reflexes and a vigilante’s keen eye, this unsung champion is the secret sauce to soaring traffic.

Picture this: your website is a thriving carnival, with merry-go-rounds of content and rollercoasters of creativity. But, alas, like an absent-minded wizard, you’ve forgotten to keep an eye on the gates. Enter Website Monitoring, the loyal gatekeeper who ensures no trolls sneak in to mess up your virtual fiesta. With a mischievous grin, it sends you real-time alerts the moment any gremlins try to mess with your website’s uptime. Your website’s downtime days are numbered!

Now, let’s journey into the realm of speed. In a world where every second counts, your website’s performance is its very heartbeat. But fret not, dear web adventurers, for Website Monitoring is the swiftest hare in the web-jungle. Armed with its trusty stopwatch, it tracks your page loading times like a hyperactive roadrunner, shouting, “Faster! Faster!” before your visitors can even say, “Are we there yet?” Voilà! Your website now zooms like a caffeine-fueled cheetah on the digital savannah.

Oh, but the fickle web travelers; they change their minds like chameleons change colors. Fear not, for Website Monitoring is here to unravel this enigma. With its mystical analytics, it becomes your crystal ball, revealing the mysteries of visitor preferences and behaviors. You’ll know what they like, what they loathe, and what they yearn for more than a lifetime supply of authentic New York style pizza. Armed with this newfound wisdom, you’ll sprinkle enchanting content like fairy dust, keeping your visitors spellbound and coming back for more.

Behold the battlefield of the mighty search engines, where websites engage in an epic struggle for visibility. But alas, valiant webmasters, Website Monitoring dons its armor of SEO prowess. It crawls through the darkest corners of the interwebs, sniffing out broken links and bad keywords like a digital bloodhound. Armed with this knowledge, you’ll climb the search engine ranks like a warrior scaling Mount Everest – and trust me, you won’t need oxygen!

In this whimsical tale of website wonders, we’ve unveiled the magical powers of Website Monitoring – the tireless protector of uptime, the guardian of speed, the oracle of analytics, and the knight of SEO. So, dear webmasters, heed this advice: with Website Monitoring by your side, you’ll wield the mighty sword of traffic-increase like a modern-day King Arthur.

Embrace the power of Website Monitoring and may your website’s journey throughout your site be filled with joy, triumphs, and an army of loyal visitors marching towards your digital domain!

Say goodbye to web nightmares and embrace the hero you deserve: AlertBot! Our supercharged website monitoring service is the ultimate sidekick you need to keep your online kingdom running smoothly. With AlertBot by your side, you’ll enjoy 24/7 vigilance, lightning-fast alerts, and more data than you can shake a unicorn horn at. So, what are you waiting for? Join the epic quest for flawless websites and unleash the power of AlertBot today – because even Gandalf would agree, “You shall not pass…without website monitoring!”

Louis is a writer, author, and avid film fan. He has been writing professionally for tech blogs and local organizations for over a decade. Louis currently resides in Allentown, PA, with his wife and German Shepherd Einstein, where he writes articles for InfoGenius, Inc, and overthinks the mythos of his favorite fandoms.

7 Deadly e-Commerce Checkout Sins

Back in the 1970s when bell bottoms roamed the world and 8-tracks reigned supreme, the Eagles warned us that Hotel California was a place where you could “checkout anytime you like, but you can never leave.”

Well, on the 21^st century e-commerce landscape there is a similar dilemma facing customers who want to buy everything from gardening equipment to a new car: they can try to checkout anytime they like, but they can never buy.

Below, we highlight seven deadly e-commerce checkout sins that lead to lost sales and reputation damage:

1. It takes too long to buy stuff.

Patience may be a virtue, but most customers aren’t in the mood to refine this noble characteristic when they’re ready to buy stuff. After all, they’ve already invested their valuable time choosing item(s). They want to cross this task off their to-do list right away. In fact, 70% of customers say that page speed impacts their willingness to buy from an online retailer.

2. The process is too complex.

People who buy things online are intelligent and savvy. But that doesn’t mean they want to feel as if they’re putting together IKEA furniture when going through the checkout process. They want the experience to be straightforward and simple.  They just want to provide the required information — and nothing more. Less is definitely more.

3. Not displaying a progress bar.

A progress bar tells customers where they are in the checkout process (e.g. cart summary, sign-in, address, shipping, payment), so they know that things are headed towards a satisfying, successful conclusion. Without this information, they can get irritated if they expect the next screen to say “thank you for your purchase”, but is yet another form to fill out.

4. No ongoing form validation.

This one is tricky. Waiting for customers to get to the end of a form before telling them that they need to fix one or multiple fields can lead to an “I can’t be bothered with this, I’m getting out of here” reaction.

The best practice here is to configure form validation to scan and report as customers move from one field to another, or possibly one section to another (e.g. shipping address to payment information). Admittedly, some customers will still be irked by these “please fix the error” messages. But sending small notes as they move through the form/section is still better than forcing them to back up after they’ve reached the finish line.

5. No guest checkout.

For businesses, granular customer data can be far more valuable than an actual purchase. However, online sellers need to resist the temptation to force all customers to create an account before they can checkout. Otherwise, they are going to lose customers; not necessarily because those customers are reluctant to share their data, but because they just aren’t in the mood to pick a username and password, and then validate their email address.

With this in mind, sellers should provide incentives for customers to create an account by, for example, informing them that doing so will enable them to track order fulfilment, save time in the future, etc.

6. Failing to EXPLICITLY mention all costs.

Customers hate discovering surprise costs at checkout. Ideally, sellers can avoid this problem entirely by having zero extra costs of any kind. But realistically, most sellers need to charge shipping/handling (at least until a threshold is met), and potentially other fees based on the item(s) being purchased, the location of the customer, and other factors.

The best way for sellers to deal with this is to make potential/inevitable extra costs explicit. Burying these details at the bottom of a page, and in font so tiny that customers need a telescope to read them, is more than worthy of a pair of Bad Idea Jeans.

7. Dysfunctional buttons, fields and other elements.

Nothing screams “please don’t buy from us” louder than a checkout process where buttons, fields and other elements don’t work, or when customers are presented with a dreaded 404 Page Not Found (ironically, the funnier or more creative this page might be, the more incensed customers can get — as if the seller is shrugging off their pain and suffering).  Using a solution like AlertBot to automatically and continuously test page integrity — and proactively send alerts when something goes wrong or doesn’t work — is an absolute must.

The Bottom Line

The e-commerce landscape is fiercely competitive, and it typically takes much less for online customers to head for the virtual exits than it does for in-store customers to head for the physical exits. Online sellers need to ensure that they aren’t committing any of the seven deadly — and wholly preventable — e-commerce sins described above. Otherwise, instead of fostering engaged customers, they will trigger outraged ones.

We have released the latest version of AlertBot. The release introduces a new interface when adding a monitor along with a new “Last 10 Waterfall Captures” report.

Monitor Type Interface:

We have done away with the old school dropdown boxes that were displayed when selecting your monitor type and created a new, more descriptive menu, which includes key features and capabilities of each monitor type. We have also changed the monitor names to better reflect the type of test they perform. Our goal with these changes is to make choosing the right monitor type easier.

New “Last 10 Waterfall Captures” Report

The new report shows the last ten waterfalls captured and is part of the larger Website Performance, Transaction Performance and Failure Analysis Reports. This is useful when you’ve recently had performance related errors or if you want to see how your performance varies between tests.
Moving To Next Generation “Real Browser” Monitoring

Another highlight of this release is that customers now have the ability to add our TrueBrowser® Website Full Page Monitors on their own. Previously, our team added the TrueBrowser Website Full Page Monitors while we were deploying additional TrueBrowser Test Stations to increase our capacity. Now that we have built up our capacity, we are opening up the doors for everyone to add this monitor type! This change is part of our move to focus our offering on TrueBrowser Website Monitoring, which provides the best error detection and the most accurate performance reporting.

AlertBot currently offers three types of Real Browser Monitoring: Full Page and Mobile Page, used to monitor individual pages, and the Multi-Step Web Transaction for monitoring online processes like logins and buying a product online.